


Shadow

by doublejoint



Series: peachtober 2020 [21]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: You really don’t need to be skilled to step backwards and smash someone’s toes
Relationships: Hanamiya Makoto/Seto Kentarou
Series: peachtober 2020 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953295
Kudos: 6





	Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> #peachtober day 21: Shadow

The first time they meet, Seto thinks he’s met hundreds of kids like Hanamiya before, fake smile and good grades and hours of studying to be the best in the class. He doesn’t exactly write him off (because, however generic his personality may be, Hanamiya’s pretty cute, and probably a good connection to make) but he doesn’t pay him all that much attention. Except--first Seto thinks he sees this by accident from the corner of his eye as he pulls his sleep mask down, but later, much later, he wonders if it wasn’t part of Hanamiya’s plan the whole time--Hanamiya’s fake smile curls into a disdainful grimace sometimes, and that’s something to think about.

And now that Seto’s looking for it, he can hear the venom in Hanamiya’s voice and see the way he carries himself, well enough like any other prep school rich kid for no one to give him a second glance, but with a bit more intention behind every step. He’s got everyone in their class wrapped around his finger, and that would be a reason for someone who cared more about people’s opinions than Seto to hate him. Seto doesn’t hate him, though, or even dislike him; it’s more he wonders, why go to all the effort to charm people you don’t care for? Why bother to build up social capital when you’re already the captain of the basketball team as a first-year? (And, if rumors are to be believed, the coach?)

“Join the basketball team,” Hanamiya says to Seto, without looking at him even halfway, and Seto’s too interested at this point to say no.

(Hanamiya would say, if Seto were to ask right now, that of course this was part of his plan, you fucking dumbass, but Seto’s not stupid enough to ask. It might be, and it might not be, but that doesn’t matter so much as the pieces having fallen into place.)

“I don’t play basketball,” Seto says on the first day of practice.

“You don’t need to,” Hanamiya sneers. “Just try to keep up with me.”

People always assume that Seto’s height lends itself to natural athleticism; Seto is so very tired of proving them wrong. But it turns out that talent is as unnecessary as experience and knowledge--the rules need to be memorized, so that they can be broken, but all he really needs to do is know where Hanamiya’s going to be. Keep up with him, mentally--and that part’s easy. Seto doesn’t need to have Hanamiya completely figured out to know where he’s going to move, where he’s going to go when he feigns one way or the other. That much is obvious, isn’t it?

He walks home afterwards with another guy from their class, Furuhashi, who is also on the basketball team. 

“Hanamiya asked you to join because he wants to know your secrets,” Furuhashi says.

“What secrets?” says Seto.

“He hates that you’re smarter than him.”

That much is something to chew on--because while, yes, Seto has spent all his life filled with classes full of grade-grubbers, competitors, resenters, who couldn’t accept that they couldn’t keep up with him, asking him to join a basketball team to learn the secrets of his intelligence certainly is a strange way of going about it.

* * *

Seto rarely plays; going by their minutes he’s the third-string center, behind Matsumoto and some third-year whose name he hasn’t bothered to learn. Hanamiya himself is too busy coaching (or at least Seto assumes he’s doing that, because he spends all the time he’s not playing catching up on sleep) to play all the time either, but when he steps on the court, Seto follows, slicking his hair back and blinking the sleep from his eyes. He is Hanamiya’s shadow, moving as he does, catching his passes and redirecting them--you don’t need to be highly skilled in order to see where your opponents aren’t, to catch a ball and throw it to the next place with reasonable accuracy.

(“Maybe you don’t,” says Yamazaki. “Honestly, you and Hanamiya are from the same fucking planet with your weird standards.”)

You really don’t need to be skilled to step backwards and smash someone’s toes, to drive your elbow back when the ref’s not looking--after all, Seto is the shadow, hiding the worst, and Hanamiya is the flame, licking and burning, standing apart from him, even though all of this is shady and shadowy, all of it with a veneer of plausible deniability on top, a second skin, the parchment at the top of a yogurt container.

* * *

Of course, Seto knows the moment Hanamiya realizes he likes him back, the way his posture changes, the way he leans into and away from Seto’s casual touch at once. He can’t honestly expect Seto to know him this well on the court and not pick up on his feelings, to expect Seto to not be so used to staring into his light and following him that he won’t get it.

Or perhaps his blind spots really are that big, 

It’s fun to string him along and play with him, but really, Seto’s not that patient. He can be, but he doesn’t have to be, and it’s more fun to flirt with Hanamiya and make him squawk, kiss him so his face flushes bright red, grab his ass when they’re heading out on the court. 

And setting Hanamiya off like this makes him meaner, more willing to throw a fist in someone’s face, drive a kick to the wrong part of someone else’s ankle, throw a harsh and heightened light for Seto’s stark and long shadow, dragging their opposition down. Like mirrors, they sink their teeth in simultaneously; they fracture the glass, and, well, it’s their opponents who were weaker, after all, inattentive, too slow to keep up.

Seto will never make it as a pro player, probably not at the college level, either. But that hasn’t ever been his goal. This, itself, stepping on the court with Hanamiya, is the goal, is the reward. 


End file.
